


Swan Tale

by archea2



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fairy Tale Retellings, Friendship, Georgie Denbrough Lives, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22529746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: A fill for a prompt that wanted "Fairy Tale retelling - Losers style". I chose Andersen'sWild Swans, my favorite, and the OP chose Stan/Mike as the endgame pairing.
Relationships: Mike Hanlon/Stanley Uris
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Swan Tale

Stan has memories. 

Stan has memories of a past, shadowing the present, when he was the apple of his father’s eye, the rabbi’s son, princeling to his synagogue. His father’s study wasn’t a dim lair, then, where the very book turn their backs on Stan. But an open treasury - a place where _study_ meant leaning into his dad’s taller form while they turned the pages of Stan’s Own Book: [Zev Raban’s ](https://imgur.com/omlvb8T)_[Alef-Bet](https://imgur.com/omlvb8T)_ , a 1926 primer with each Hebrew letter filled in gold leaf and illustrated by a bird. 

This was then. Now is alone, Stan left without a day when his father does not dismiss him ever-which-way. He would turn to his friends instead, but they’re all gone - Ben the Kind, Bev the Bright, Bill the Brave, Eddie, Richie, Georgie, even little Georgie! Stan’s favourite, because the kid is all dew and dimples, a lightweight on Stan’s bike and a counterweight to his moodiness. All of them gone overnight. And Derry turning two blind eyes. No search. No bother. All the Losers but one repudiated in one fell swoop.

Stan is terrified that he, too, will forget.

He makes his summer program to comb the woods where they loved to play. The dawn finds him in an empty clubhouse; the evening at the edge of the creek where they waded and splashed one another. Later and later, he sits on the shore and throws stones across the motionless waters, sending curfew time further away with each duck and drake. It’s not like Dad cares, anyway. 

Stan loiters on, bare knees drawn up to his chest, watching the last touch of sun sink into the lake.

And then, the swans.

One minute Stan is alone. The next, the air is being tousled with great beats of wings and the swans are homing in on him. They’re beautiful, all six of them: the most breathtaking birds in Sam’s vision field ever, so that he forgets to breathe or - wonder of wonders - be scared. Three of the birds are flying together, the middle swan drooping between his friends, a trickle of red on his white breast. The last two circle each other, one of them with a little cygnet on his back like a grey plushie. The cygnet’s beak gleams yellow in the dusk.

Night falling, swans landing. The cygnet hops to the ground and waddles up to Stan, climbing Stan's lap resolutely. All of a sudden there’s an armful of Georgie round his neck, and voices he thought he’d never hear again, a warm criss-cross of _Stan, Stanny-boy, Stanlily, our man Stan_ and Stan is crying.

Ben flops to the ground, still supported by Bev and Bill. The graze on his stomach has torn his T-shirt open, causing Stan to hurry back to his bike, properly propped against the sewer wall, so he can get a bottle of water. On second thoughts he brings snacks, a torch and an extra sweater. Stan is nothing if not prepared.

“Ta, good sir,” Richie says, his mock-British oddly nasal. Stan suspects that he’s spent the entire day honking. “Fucking Bowers threw rocks at us.”

“What the… everlasting… fuck,” Stan says, too upset to mind his P’s and F’s.

Eddie is already catching him up nineteen to the dozen, although it’s such a wild tale that Stan struggles to be in the clear. Once he is, his head dazed, Richie is stuffing his cheeks with Stan’s chocolate bars even while grabbing at the last word.

“That’s right. Cosmic evil clown flipped us the bird.”

* * *

They spend the night in the open, a sleepy group cuddle. A little voice in Stan’s head, a miniature Donald Uris, shrills that he is expected home to partake of _Ma’ariv_ , the evening prayer. Another, rebel voice answers, _Let them pray_. Stan’s prayer is in his arms, one reaching out to take Richie’s hand in his sleep, the other cradling Georgie to his chest like a limp warm ball. Home can wait.

“Can you k-k-keep Georgie with you today?” Bill asks anxiously when the sky turns a paler ink. Next to him, Ben nods his urge. Survival is no picnic for the young, and Georgie is clearly exhausted by yesterday’s all-day flight. “We’re kinda winging it here, and I don’t wuh-want him to run into any more trouble.”

Yesterday Stan would have argued hotly about Dad, chores, his bedroom being too neat to hide a chick the size of an adult duck. Morning Stan rides home with a swanling in his rucksack.

He spends most of the day in his room, the shutters half closed against the brilliant sun, consoling Georgie when the kid hangs his beak in dejection. The cygnet rests his neck along Stan’s forearm, a gesture that kindles a love that battles the pang in Stan’s soul. In the afternoon he runs a bath so Georgie won’t be dehydrated and laughs at his enthusiastic paddling. 

Day lets go of night, reuniting a happy Georgie with Bill. Eddie chatters about the herbs he found to help heal Ben, “it’s called Feet-o-therapy, guys, and it’s totally legit”, cueing Richie on Eddie’s Mom’s slippers. Ben speaks of the home he’s building for them upland: the Losers have found a pond near the Hanlon farm, in all odds a wilder, safer place for them, and Ben _thinks_ he’s got the hang of nests. Bev smiles; Ben blushes; later on, wedged between Bill and Richie, Stan dreams.

His dream is weird. For real weird. See, the cantor in his dad’s synagogue has a soft spot for the Song of Solomon and likes nothing more than to intone _The voice of the turtle is known in the land_. But this turtle? Is larger than life. Okay, so it does have a kind voice, even as it imparts to Stan that he’ll have to be brave, braver than he ever was, and do things to save his friends that turn Stan’s blood to frost.

“I can’t,” he tells the Turtle, shame bleeding into vehemence. “I love them but I can’t go down there, I can’t, not alone, I can’t face IT. I’ll die if I do!”

“They will if you don’t,” the Turtle hums kindly, and Stan wakes to Richie’s bumblebee snore, warm and vibrant.

The next day he steals into the kitchen during prayers, pilfers the family fridge, and pedals away upland to see the nests. He finds the pond, a slate-blue ring of water, and the three nests nearby: disc-shaped, perfect cat’s-cradles (well, swan’s-cradles) of twigs, Ben at his best. Empty cradles, though. His friends must have gone to ransack the hill for roots and berries.

Stan unpacks the food and shares it between the nests, covering it with fresh leaves. He flips the kickstand on his bike, and just as he prepares to walk it downhill, he is met with a “Hey!”.

A boy his own age is walking uphill. “Hey,” the boy calls again, his brown cheeks uplifted by a smile. He looks quite different here, not the grim-faced, evasive boy biking in and out of Derry at a rate of knots. Here, he looks in his element. Right, Stan tells himself, because this is Leroy Hanlon’s land, which makes _Stan_ the trespasser. 

He looks at Mike Hanlon’s lit-up face and finds his throat locked.

“Stanley, right?” Mike says. “I’ve seen you before, round our church corner. Listening to our hymns.”

A trespasser once…

But Mike says, “Wanna come home with me? Gran's made an apple crisp” and Stan’s blood rises quicker than his _yes_ , scalding his cheeks. 

Mike smiles brighter. Mike offers his hand. They stand, surrounded by the open grass and the blushing apple trees. And since it takes two to commit to hospitality, Stan, taking the warm hand, vows himself silently. 

* * *

The apple crisp is awesome. So is Mrs Hanlon, a wrinkled but regal presence (“You all bones and curls, boy. What’s Derry up to you now, starves its young? You do my crisp justice.”). Only Leroy Hanlon stands apart, staring at Stan with eyes that never go soft and unsuspicious. 

Can Stan blame him? He’s heard about the Black Spot - the only Loser whose dad had to coach him through the Recitation of Sins and the specifics of hard-heartedness. In Leroy’s eyes, Stan is a budding _one of them_. And while he won’t forbid Mike to see him, no more than he forbids Mike to bike in and out of town, Stan is dead sure that Leroy would break them off if he had the faintest idea of Stan’s quest. There’s crap, and there’s dark crap, and then there’s picking all that poison ivy at midnight with his bare hands, prior to taking it deep, deeper, deepest down under the Neibolt house of all places. That’s where IT’s private graveyard is, and that’s where Stan will have to burn the poison and speak words into the smoke as an apo… an apo… an apotropaic ritual. Whatever that is.

Only, the apo-thing would probably strike the Hanlons as pretty messed up, even for a spawn of Derry.

So Stan doesn’t tell Mike about the Losers.

Or the ritual.

Instead, he asks Mike about his faith. It’s something that torments Stan almost as much as his own fear. He no longer knows what he believes. Or if he believes. Because even if the Turtle is anything close to the god his father prays, and his father’s fathers before him, why did he choose the weakest link to save the day? That’s not kindness! That’s cruelty! 

He doesn’t tell the Losers, because he doesn’t want to seed despair on the nights when they talk - well, Stan no longer talks, only hugs them and strokes Georgie’s hair - but Stan doesn’t think he can do it. The first part, yeah, fine. Derry is fringed with poison ivy, so Stan just sets his young jaw and plucks at the branches that burn like fire and leave his arms red and raw. 

(He’s taken to wearing long sleeves after the Losers first noticed, and Richie’s STD joke petered out when Georgie cried and tried to kiss the stings better, poor kid.)

“I dunno, man,” Mike tells him. “I believe because I want to. Like, I don’t know if I’ll see my dad and mom again. But I _choose_ to believe I will, because that’s the one thing I can do.”

Stan isn’t too sure, but Mike leans sideways, and Stan turns his head to him, and the shy dry kiss is nothing like Georgie’s. Stan closes his eyes; lets their kiss drift down to his unquiet heart.

“So if I choose to believe I’m something...”

“Yeah,” Mike says, and Mike’s following of sheep bleats contentedly. “Yeah, it should do the trick. What do you want to be?”

Oh, the ache to tell him! But the fear gets to Stan before Mike’s patient gaze does, and he shakes his head feebly. Mike moves his eyes away, and Stan feels half the blood in his heart dying away because Mike looks so disappointed. It hurts, to hurt Mike. Stan wants to kiss him instead, but Mike’s cheek is turned towards his home, and he and Stan part in silence.

That night, he doesn’t visit the nests. His father has made it very clear that Stan is overdue for curfew time and it’s either dinner at seven or hell to pay. Stan obeys, but half of him is loitering on the hill, wondering if Mike hates him and if the socks he left for his friends will be enough to keep them warm (Eddie says a cold catches you by the ankle). It’s late August, summer on its last legs. How do swans fare in the Fall? Does Maine _hunt_ swans? What if Henry Bowers gets hold of his dad’s veteran rifle? This can’t go on.

“Stanley? Where are you, son, up in the moon?”

Dad’s voice, kinder than it has been in months. Stan lifts fevered eyes from his plate.

“Sorry, Dad.”

“That’s all right. I know I haven’t been much of a presence these days. No wonder you are a little distracted.”

“Dad,” Stan whispers, and Dad’s sherry brown gaze, filled with last year’s kindness, finds and holds his across the hardwood. 

“But I know just the thing to do.”

“You do?”

Because Dad’s eyes are so, so knowing, brighter than he’s ever seen them.. 

“Of course. Tomorrow” - kind, smiling over at Stan - “let us read about fear.”

Stan’s heart leaps up to his throat.

“Your Torah verse,” says Dad patiently. _“_ Numbers 13 _._ _The land we explored devours those who enter it. What lives in it is of great size, we seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them._ Do you want to be devoured, Stan? Do you? Do you? Do you? DO YOU? _”_

Stan rises from his chair too quickly for the chair, the chair's legs screeching against the floor as his own scramble a way for him to the door. He never stops until he is past the door, past the house, into the red sunset light; and then somehow on his bike, riding a crazy zigzag to Neibolt. The night butts in halfway, obliviating the path; but Stan’s mount is a Loser's bike, tried and true, faithful to the last - even when it's the last house on Neibolt, looking ready to gulp Stan down when he climbs its steps. 

He pauses to take off his belt and loop it around the poison ivy, strapping the boughs to his chest. They burrow into his neck and chin, but Stan welcomes the fire; makes it burn off his fear. And the well _is_ there, proving the Turtle right, and so is Mike’s clear voice in Stan’s head, battling IT’s taunts. _Choose to believe_ , Mike begs, and Stan, lowering himself down the well stone by stone, makes the choice. Makes it all the way down, until IT's tower graveyard soars up, greeting Stan with a little reedy tune.

“Stanley Uris,” says the ghoul. Her face is twisted and bone-white, like the flute in her hand, and every word she says fills her mouth with teeth. “The boy who went forth to learn what fear was.”

She raises the bone to her mouth, and a cold wind blows over Stan’s fingers, numbing them on his belt. 

“I believe,” Stan tells the frozen air. He can hear a rustle of mud and water in his back, but makes his knees stand stiff. “I believe, I believe!”

He grabs the branches between frozen palms, tugs them loose so he can drop them on the muddy ground between them. The ghoul smiles more teeth.

“Boy with sticks,” IT says, each word a hollow bang. “Boooo! I sip your sap, I fuel your fear. But perhaps I’ll be generous and cut you a share. Little Georgie, now, your sweet duckling: I’ll let him go, but first I’ll have his little white wing for my teeth.”

“I’ll - I’ll fucking burn you!” Stan cries, his hands revived by the pain.

But the ghoul only tips half of her head back for glee. “With what, birdboy?”

The matches.

The matches are still next to the Shabbat candle in his father’s study.

The cold creeps up his legs and down his arms, numbing his empty hands. But he is choosing, choosing, choosing, and there’s a sudden cry of “Catch!” at his elbow. His legs are back, turning him sideways, to where Mike is tossing him a small bright object. Before he knows it, Stan has sparked the lighter alive and the first green branch is cottoning to the fire. Up goes the fire, and Stan, his throat unlocked, speaks the words into it while IT shrieks, IT shrinks, and the air is swirled with invisibly beating wings. 

“We need to get out,” Mike mouthes over the noise, catching his hand. Stanley is not too sure how they make it to the surface. But they do, until he can see the first star at the far end of the way, now the house walls have collapsed all around the well. 

They bump each other stumbling out of the ruins, and Stan says “Why, Mike, why?”.

“My grandfather said we should follow you,” Mike says. “He felt there was something wrong, um, about you.”

“Well, there was. Strictly speaking,” says Stan, because even in the thick of it, Stan pays attention to words. Mike apparently finds it hilarious, but his face sobers next and he says “Just so you know, I was terrified.”

“Me too, Mike.”

“No, listen. The fire. IT used the fire to keep me scared - I think. All I could hear for a long time was people burning. But before I followed you, _I_ asked Grandfather for his lighter. Dunno why, I just… I’m happy I did.” Mike takes a deep breath. “Even if I have no idea what just happened.”

It's a tie between _You saved me, that's what_ and _Noticed any swans lately?_ , an issue settled for Stan with a chime of bicycle bells. Soon enough he is the center of a happy, human roundabout, with Mike somehow caught into the vortex. The Losers’ de facto leader is doing his best to tell Mike the entire story, while Richie keeps cutting him off with “Shut your bill, Bill”. Georgie is giving away _two_ -armed hugs; Eddie is poking at Stan’s arms and talking calamine and long soapy baths to cure the rash; Ben is counting socks aloud. 

Thus, your typical Losers’ social evening, with the proviso that they’re eight instead of seven.

“Looks like we got ourselves a plus one,” Bev says brightly when Mike asks all of them over at the farm for breakfast, and what Mrs Hanlon will say to that, Stan isn’t too sure. But Mike looks like he got it. In fact, Mike takes Stan’s hand very purposefully.

(Richie goes full-on _gulp_ among the back-row audience. But he still lifts both his thumbs up.)

They lead the way up into the hill and the dawn, Stan and Mike, the Losers falling into a happy line behind them - the Maine birds singing from every angle - and no end of summer in sight. 

**Author's Note:**

> The original tale can be found here: http://hca.gilead.org.il/wild_swa.html


End file.
